


Boyfriends Anonymous

by theotpeffect



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tumblr, Fluff, High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5526134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theotpeffect/pseuds/theotpeffect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco has been getting cute anon messages for a long time, and he finally takes it upon himself to find out who it is that's sending them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boyfriends Anonymous

With a thud of his backpack, and a rustle of the notebooks and single textbook inside, Jean returned home from another grueling day of school. He was exhausted as always and made a beeline to his laptop, resting peacefully atop his desk.

He pulled his chair out, throwing himself into it unceremoniously while opening the small bag of chips he had smuggled from the kitchen when he returned home. He wasn’t keen on starting on his homework, as per usual. But he knew he’d feel guilty for starting something else, like that new Netflix series he had been hoping to watch. So instead, he decided to open Tumblr. There was someone on there he wanted to check on anyways. He was too busy the night before to browse the internet when he was cramming for a test. But now he felt like it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on his favorite blog. Although, he wasn’t sure how it even got to that status in the first place.

It had been a thirst follow. He had stalked a bunch of aesthetic blogs for ideas for an upcoming art project and that was how he found they-call-me-starface (with a different URL at the time). And amongst the pastel, nature gifs and photos, Jean had stumbled across a selfie of the cute owner. He had been smiling softly at the camera, his freckles highlighted from some light streaming in from a window to his left. And his eyes were a beautiful brown. That was when Jean had hit the follow button, despite having no interest in aesthetic blogs before. But the kicker was, this was a boy Jean recognized from the hallways in school, and seeing his selfie certainly wasn’t the first time he’d ever ogled him.

And here he was finally after that fateful follow, stalking the boy’s blog because he certainly didn’t know what else to do with his growing crush other than send him flirty anon messages over his new selfies, and ask memes.

It was worth it though, Jean was able to see him for more than just the fleeting moments in the hallways, and he could speak to him, even if it was in this roundabout fashion. He wanted more, he really did. But for now, he was alright with gazing from afar.

Starface had a new selfie up. It was from yesterday and the first thing on his blog. He was smiling again, this one seemed like he was caught in the middle of laughter. The sunshine was coming in from his left again and he had his characteristic pose for the camera, with his face slightly turned towards the light, the camera higher than his line of sight so he had to tilt his head up. He was wearing a pastel pink sweater that matched the color of his blog theme, and made his eyes seem an even more wonderful brown. He looked gorgeous as always and Jean felt the need to tell him (as always).

He clicked on the little check-box that would switch his ask to anonymous, changing his icon from a screaming pepe to the little gray circle with sunglasses.

_Hi, it’s the anon with the crush on you again... I just wanted to say that you look absolutely amazing in your new selfie, you’re gorgeous as always._

He considered throwing a heart on the end but he was already blushing enough to be slightly mortified by the idea. So he just sent it as was and waited patiently for his crush’s response.  


\---

 

Marco was tired. It had been a long day of studying at the library with Armin and he was ready to unwind. Once he got home he flopped onto his bed and dragged his phone from his pocket, immediately opening Tumblr.

He had gotten a little notification during his time at the library about someone having sent him a message. As the app was loading he secretly hoped it was the anon that was flirting with him. It was odd to feel that way over someone he pictured as the icon all anons had but the messages were somehow earnest. And he’d be lying if he said that the allure of the enigma that was Flirty Anon was too much to pass up.

The messages had all started when he had posted an ask meme. It was the first time he had ever done something like that but he’d found some courage from his few hundred decent followers. It was a few hours after he had reblogged, after a few curious anons and a braver soul who didn’t mask their URL had sent him asks that a more peculiar one showed up.

_Pink- I have a crush on you. I know this might sound a bit lame but it’s very much true... Sorry if that sounded creepy, or if that bothers you, but I really have a /huge/ crush on you..._

It took him an hour to figure out how to respond to that one. He was a bit suspicious of the person at first (even if it did seem adorably sincere), it was the internet after all. But after the messages continued to be sent with as much innocent sincerity as the first time, Marco started becoming curious. And with that curiosity he had started inviting whoever the anon was to talk to him, especially with the new messaging system. But no one had come forth saying that they were the anon.

And it was as Marco opened his inbox and was greeted with the anons latest message that he decided he would get to the bottom of things. He wasn’t so bad with computers and he was sure whatever advice he could find on the internet would be helpful in tracking the anon’s IP address. Those kinds of programs were typically used for anon hate he presumed but he was getting extremely curious and it didn’t look as if the anon was going to reveal themselves any time soon.

He booted up his computer and thought of ways to answer the ask in the meantime. He wanted to say something a bit more sincere than his usual answer, but he was at a complete loss as to what to say. He didn’t know them, he didn’t even know their name or their gender if they even had one. He sighed as his computer finally finished laboring through power up. Once it was completely loaded he made a beeline to Tumblr and answered the ask.

_Omg, thank you so much!!!! Why don’t you come off anon sometime?? Please? I really want to talk to you, you’re so sweet!!_

He tagged it quickly, mostly moving through habit, but he did smile when he made it to the final tag. Flirty Anon had made so many appearances that Marco had decided to give them their own tag, under the same name as his fond nickname for them.

“Alright,” he said once the ask was published. “Time to find out exactly how to do this.”  


\---

 

He had scrolled through hours of long winded articles, with far too much narrative for his liking, and exhausted many search results before he got down to coding and downloading everything necessary for this project. About halfway through, he questioned whether or not this would even be worth it. For all he knew the anon could be some creepy middle aged pervert, or they would be pissed at him for invading their privacy in such a way and it would all be for nothing.

But he urged himself to continue. He had already made it so far and he was determined to get it done, especially after all the hours he’d just put behind this endeavor instead of his AP homework.

By the time midnight came around, Marco found it. The URL that always came with Flirty Anon’s messages was from a jean-thirstmeme.  
Their blog wasn’t exactly what he expected. It was filled to the brim with memes, shitposts and a conglomeration of many other things that interested the owner. Marco kind of imagined them to have also had an aesthetic blog. Most of his followers were aesthetic bloggers, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to attract people who just wanted something pretty across their dashboards every once in a while. But this blog was a far cry from what he had imagined.

Still, he couldn’t judge, he had his own personal side blog that wasn’t lacking in its fair share of memes.

He scrolled through their blog for a bit, liking and reblogging a couple of things as he went (making sure he was on his personal blog first).

After a while he stopped and began to wonder what jean-thirstmeme looked like. It didn’t look like they tagged things however. Everything went untagged except for the occasional snarky comment, and one lone gif of some swaying leaves that was tagged as ‘art ref.’

Marco began with searching through ‘me’ as a tag first, since that was the one he used for his own selfies and therefore seeming the most natural starting point, but only came up with a good number of text posts that made him laugh. Next, he searched ‘my face’ since that seemed to be a popular one and this time he had hit the jackpot.

Smirking at the camera was a handsome boy who Marco had actually seen in the hallways of his school. He gaped at the picture, the dimple in his right cheek, his slightly tousled hair, his- well, his bare chest. So he wasn’t a pervert. Just a _very_ good-looking high school boy that somehow managed to find himself having a huge gay crush on Marco Bodt.

Marco didn’t hesitate for a second to hit the follow button.

From there he continued to stalk his blog. Browsing through his art references was a wonderful peek into his mind, Marco thought. Though he didn’t post any of his own art he was hoarding gifs and photos of nature. Trees seemed to be a popular reference in his blog. There were many close-ups of swaying leaves and shots of forests. He understood now why he would have followed him.

When Marco finally crawled into bed he was smiling widely. He’d finally, finally found Flirty Anon. And now, he wanted to talk to him face-to-face so badly. There was a tickle of anxiety in the back of his mind however, about him being offended by Marco’s invasiveness, but he decided he’d still speak to him the next day. If he saw him in the hallways he’d arrange to meet him after school so they could finally speak about this. And maybe, Marco would ask him out as well.

 

\---

 

Groggily, Marco stumbled into school. He hadn’t seen Flirty Anon outside in the student parking lot, although he wasn’t sure if he actually drove or not. It seemed likely, he looked the same age as Marco himself. But nevertheless, Marco held some hope that he would see him inside.

Marco didn’t see him when he entered, but when he finally returned a book that was long overdue, he saw him lounging on one of the couches in the library. He looked even better in real life, in Marco’s opinion. He was wearing black skinny jeans (that looked _very_ good on him) and a faded band t-shirt, with a beanie resting peacefully on his lap. He was scrolling through his phone, oblivious to Marco’s gape. Finally, Marco gathered himself enough to at least move closer to him.

Once he reached his side he tapped lightly on his shoulder. The boy turned around, taking an earbud out and scowling before his mouth opened just slightly at the sight of Marco in front of him.

“Um, hi,” Marco said with a small wave. “I was- I was just wondering if it was alright if I talked to you about- something?”

He nodded with wide eyes and opened his mouth, only to be interrupted by the warning bell. Marco checked his phone quickly for the time and realized how late it was getting.

“Right, um, can we talk after school? We can meet up here, if you want.”

He nodded again and finally spoke. “Y-yeah, yeah of c-course.”

“Great.” Marco smiled. “I’ll see you later then?”

Another nod. Then Marco rushed off to class.

\---

  
The day crawled by excruciatingly slowly. Marco couldn’t seem to focus very well on anything but the conversation he hoped to have with Flirty Anon. He wanted to know his name for sure, and not just the one he suspected from his URL. He wanted to have an actual conversation with him. And he wanted to learn if he would continue to speak with Marco once he learned about what a creeper he was the other night.

When the final bell for the day rang, Marco made a beeline to the library. He arrived before Flirty Anon and decided to take a seat where he had been sitting that morning, if only to look a little less awkward. But he didn’t have to wait for long before he finally arrived.

When he caught sight of Marco his cheeks turned slightly pink and his stride became less rushed.

“Hey,” he said, perching right next to Marco on the couch.

“Hi,” Marco said quietly. He smiled. “I’m Marco.”

“Jean,” he said. He held out a slightly shaky hand that Marco took eagerly.

“Um, I know this might be a little weird to ask since we just now spoke to each other,” he said. He started to pick at his jeans. “But do you have a Tumblr account?”

“Y-yeah,” Jean said.

“Are you jean-thirstmeme?” Marco asked. He tried not to laugh from having to say that url out loud, and his nerves weren’t really helping his cause. “Um, the anon who’s been sending me those c-cute messages?”

Jean hung his head and buried his face in his hands. “Jesus, how did you even find that out?”

Marco took that as a yes.

“I- I kind of tracked your IP address?” Marco said, with a wavering chuckle.

Jean peeked at him and snorted. “Seriously? Oh my god. I didn’t think I was worth that much trouble, so I didn’t ever worry about being found out.”

“I’m sorry!” Marco said as Jean frowned after his statement. “I was just- just really, really curious. And you’re so sweet, like I’ve said before, I just had to know who you were.” Marco stood up and shrugged his backpack on again when Jean’s frown and furrow between his eyebrows deepened. “I’m really sorry, that was overstepping my boundaries wasn’t it? I don’t blame you if you’re mad at me.”

“No wait!” Jean said and jumped up. “I’m not mad, I’m mostly just really embarrassed?” He rubbed the back of his neck and puffed out a breath before continuing. “I sent some really sappy asks- I didn’t think you’d ever find me out.”

Marco smiled, but Jean wasn’t looking. His gaze was directed right towards his old converse. “I’m glad I did find you, though.”

Jean winced. “So is this part where you tell me to stop harassing you?”

“Well, no,” Marco said and stepped just a little closer, enough to get Jean’s attention and bring his eyes up. “I was actually thinking this was the part where I asked you out?”

Jean gaped. “O-oh.”

“Is that alright with you?”

“Y-yeah,” Jean said and reached for Marco’s hand. “That’s- that’s more than alright, actually.”

“Great,” Marco said and dropped a peck on Jean’s cheek. “I’ll message you tonight then, alright?”

“Okay,” Jean said quietly.

Marco smiled and waved as he walked out of the library. He tried very hard not to grin like a complete idiot so he could still look at least a little cool. But once he was out of Jean’s sight he couldn’t help the grin that split his face.

Finding that IP address was definitely worth it.

 

 


End file.
